"Never mind the fact that the iPod turned the entire music industry on its head. Never mind the fact that most successful notebooks today resemble designs first popularized by Apple. Never mind the fact that the blueprint of the modern day smartphone remains the original iPhone. Never mind the fact that competitors are scrambling wildly to copy the success and design of the iPad. Forget all of these things, because when it comes to Apple, the 'what have you done for me lately?' mentality reigns supreme."

I would disagree with this. People could rip their CDs easily. The click-wheel interface combined with a larger display made finding a track easy. You could scroll through a large music library easily and find the song or artist you wanted. The same was not true of competing devices at the time. Apple also built in FireWire, which shipped with most Macs at the time. Users could load up 5GB of music quickly compared to USB 1.1.

It's true that iTunes made it easy to manage music and create playlists and such, but the device itself was much more user friendly. Despite the higher cost, comparatively small amount of storage, and the fact it only worked with the Mac at first, it took off.